


Coda

by objectiveheartmuscle



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Discussions of Rape & Abuse, Drabble Collection, F/M, Ficlet Collection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-09-02 14:34:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8671246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectiveheartmuscle/pseuds/objectiveheartmuscle
Summary: co·da | /ˈkōdə/ | (noun) — the concluding passage of a piece or movement, typically forming an addition to the basic structure[missing canon moments between everyone's favorite dream team]





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> post "Heartfelt Passages" (17x23)

He’s not bitter. He refuses to be bitter. Descending that low would make him no better than the average caveman, beating his chest and crouching low over a woman who’s far from his.

On second thought, he decides that analogy is offensive to cavemen. Rafael Barba is acting like a far less evolved creature.

“Counselor.”

Carisi’s voice cuts through his thoughts, bringing him back to his present: the junior detective sitting across the desk, his pen frozen mid air over a file related to the case he's assisting Rafael in prepping. There's a look on his face — confused with a smidge of concern — that makes Rafael want to fling himself out of his office window just to get away from it. It's too caring.

“What?” Rafael asks gruffly, refusing to let Carisi know that he caught him spacing out. A copy of the same file is open on his lap; his feet are slung up on the desk, but he hasn't been able to focus on it for the past few minutes.

“You okay?” Carisi asks.

Rafael arches an eyebrow. Hasn't this kid figured out by now that the buddy system is for kindergartners?

“I asked if you've heard from the Lieutenant recently and I got ten minutes of silence while you zoned out.”

Okay, so more than a few minutes.

“M’fine.” Rafael shifts in his desk chair — it's suddenly a concrete slab underneath him — and clicks his pen open-shut-open. “And no, I haven't. She's coming back soon.”

_Wednesday afternoon._

The thought of Olivia romping around Paris with Ed Tucker of all people doesn't sit right with Rafael. It's not that he wants to be there instead…it's just that imagining the two of them walking down the _Champs Elysées_ with Noah between them leaves a taste in his mouth like he's bitten a lemon wedge that's been sitting out on the kitchen counter for a day.

“And then it's back to the grind,” Carisi tries to joke, but it falls flat on Rafael. “It's good that she got a vacation, though. Fin says she hasn't used any PTO for something relaxing in years.”

Rafael hums as he stands, suddenly needing to pace. His office is nearly the size of his apartment but he's never felt more caged. He wanders over to his coffee pot, inwardly groaning when he sees he's out.

“You sure you're alright, Barba?” Carisi asks, causing Rafael to shove the pot back on the hot plate with more force than he meant to.

“Yeah.” Then, needing a redirect: “What did the girlfriend initially tell Rollins again?”

“Huh.”

“What?”

“You're the only person I've met who's ever gotten upset over their coworker taking time off.”

Rafael spins around on his heel, feeling his hackles rise. It's easy to forget that under the charming affect and bumbling attempts at friendship, Sonny Carisi is wildly insightful, perhaps even more so than Rafael himself. And really, if he had anything to hide, he knew he should be doing a better job of hiding it around people who've been trained to smell lies from a mile away.

To distract himself, he pulls out his phone and texts Carmen, asking for her to grab water so he can brew more coffee. Walking over to his door and asking her aloud is too much on his thought processes at the moment.

“I'm not…upset,” he says unusually slowly, as he returns to his desk. He sinks into his chair, not looking at Carisi.

“Then why do I get the feeling that ‘coworker’ was never a wholly appropriate description for you two?”

Carmen comes in then, silent as she leaves a carafe of water and picks up the empty one from that morning. Rafael doesn't speak until she leaves.

“We're—”

Could he say they were friends? They definitely used to be, once upon a time. In the year she had to deal with William Lewis, a quiet bond had formed between them as she shared her experiences and he gave his unspoken vow to take her secrets to his grave. He'd heard through Amaro that Cassidy had felt on the outs when she didn't talk to him about what she'd gone through. On some level, he couldn't help but feel vindicated that he'd been made privy to pieces of her that no one else got to see, even if he knew that only happened because he was her lawyer and had needed to know enough to protect her during her trial.

“Your secret is safe with me, Counselor,” Carisi says with a wink, shaking Rafael out of his thoughts for the second time that afternoon. Carisi dives back into the file, reading out the requested testimony, but his voice is distant as Rafael wonders how much Ed Tucker knows about his girlfriend’s demons.


	2. Surrender Benson I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She hums, her eyes fluttering shut for a breath. Her free hand is resting on the blanket, as still as an undisturbed lake. When her eyes open, there’s a resigned greyness in them. “I’ve been told I’m alone here. At this hospital, I mean.”
> 
> The words confuse him — wouldn’t she be able to figure out she was given a single room just by looking around? — but then when her meaning hits, it sucker punches him in the gut. She can’t even indirectly reference William Lewis right now. Her uphill battle suddenly seems that much steeper.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> post "Surrender Benson" (4x24)
> 
> trigger warning for descriptions of anxiety/panic attacks

> **Day One (Friday, May 24, 2013)**

The day after Olivia Benson was rescued from Hell itself, Nick Amaro shows up in Rafael Barba’s office, looking like even his exhaustion has fatigue.

“Have you seen her?” are the first words out of Rafael’s mouth, and in any other situation, he’d stop at how desperate he sounded.

 “Yeah.” Amaro shuts the door, slumps down into a chair opposite Rafael.

“How is she?”

Amaro takes a second to respond, still staring off into space. He shakes his head and sits up, leg bouncing as he chooses his words. “She’s… It’ll take a while, but she’ll pull through. Physically, she’s just a little…broken wrist, a couple cuts, some burns. Cragen’s letting her wait to give her statement until she’s ready.”

Something lurches inside Rafael. He wasn’t sure how much worse he was expecting, but it’s still too much. She shouldn’t have to be going through any of this.

“So she hasn’t—”

“Nah.” Amaro’s mouth twists. “She hasn’t said anything to any of us. Cassidy’s losing his mind.”

Rafael can’t ask it, doesn’t want to ask it, almost refuses to ask it, but curiosity and this weird, insatiable need to know how she is takes over, and all he can get out is, “So we don’t know if he—”

“She did a rape kit, but none of us are on her case, so I have no idea what it came back with.”

Distantly, Rafael is aware of his hands clinging to the arms of his desk chair to keep them from shaking. A rape kit didn’t necessarily mean anything — it could prove a lack of trauma, too. God only knew how many cases had been drastically altered by a negative rape kit.

That’s what he has to keep telling himself if he didn’t want to explode with anger and fear.

“I’m, uh, headed out to Brookhaven now, if you want to come with. I know you’ve probably got a lot you need to catch up on—”

“I’ll come.” Rafael’s already standing and reaching for his keys. “None of this needs to be ready until Tuesday, anyway.”

“Okay.” Amaro nods once, as if convincing himself to get up as well, and lets Rafael take a minute to get his life in order. “I don’t even know if she wants to see anyone, but I figured—” 

“—It wouldn’t hurt to try,” Rafael finishes, grabbing his suit jacket off the coat stand by the door, the one Olivia always seems to ignore.

Amaro laughs, hollow and kind of forced. “Yeah, you never know with her sometimes.”

Rafael’s eyebrows scrunch together in confusion as he lets Amaro lead the way out. What kind of detective didn’t know his own partner after two years on the job?

—

The two hour drive out to Long Island is suddenly dwarfed by the length of their walk from Amaro’s car up to the women’s general wing. His stomach’s been in knots since Amaro first showed up, and they only twist tighter as his feet carry him towards her room.

He lets out a tiny breath of relief when he sees an officer posted outside her door, but it’s not much. His shoulders still feel like titanium.

The blinds over the tiny window in the door are half shut, and he can see she’s staring out the window, the fingers on her uninjured hand obsessively twirling a loose thread in her blanket. Her hair looks like someone did their best to wash and brush it without the services of a shower.

“Let me see how she’s…” Amaro falters, suddenly looking apprehensive. “I don’t know if…”

“Go.” Rafael barely manages to keep his voice from cracking. There’s a million reasons he comes up with that sit on the tip of his tongue, all excuses for why Amaro should go in first, alone. Above all, this is a situation nobody expected to find themselves in. “I can keep myself busy.”

And he does, for all of twenty seconds before he’s pocketing his phone and pacing the short space in the hallway in front of her room. The officer is from Suffolk County, so it’s no one he knows nor cares to learn about; nurses flit from rooms to the station across from Olivia’s, all too busy to really pay attention to him. It’s fine. He doesn’t really feel like interacting with anyone right now.

Through the blinds, he can see where Amaro’s sitting in a chair between the bed and the window, looking like he’s trying his hardest to keep a neutral face while listening to Olivia talk quietly.

“May I help you?”

The voice startles Rafael out of his thoughts, and he stops short. There’s a nurse he hasn’t registered yet standing behind the station, arching an eyebrow at him. She looks close to his mother’s age, the same short-cropped hair giving off a vibe of not taking anyone’s bullshit and some weight around her middle, injecting some warmth into her words.

“I’m alright,” he lies with a shake of his head.

The nurse tilts her head. “You weren’t here yesterday when she was admitted.” The silent _who are you?_ hangs in the air.

“No, I was not,” he agrees, wandering closer the nurse’s station as an idea hit him. Amaro may not be able to find out anything, but Rafael always has strings with a longer reach that he could pull, even if nothing is official yet. He’ll probably hear about the final decision on Monday. “Rafael Barba, Manhattan D.A.’s office.”

“Linda, her nurse.” She regards him for a moment. “Seems a little early for Ms. Benson to be calling in lawyers.”

“We’ve worked together for about a year,” he clarifies, a little voice kicking him for the feeble explanation. _Friend, friend, you could’ve just called her your friend._

Linda nods, still appearing not entirely sure of him. “Then I’m sure you’re aware that I can’t share anything with you if you’re not officially her lawyer.”

He can feel the air rush out of him as he deflates. So much for not mucking that up.

“But—” He catches the briefest _something_ in Linda’s eye as she takes a seat in front of one of the computers and starts tapping on the keyboard, likely pulling up Olivia’s chart. “I can tell you that if all goes well, she’ll be discharged in the next day or two. She was really only admitted to make sure she sobered up without a problem and got fluids.”

Well that was better than nothing.

“I’ll also remind you that she’s here and not in up Behavioral Health,” Linda adds, clicking through the chart. “I’d be far more worried if she’d ended up there.”

There’s no time to process that last piece of information, not with Linda standing and making her way to a medical supply cabinet, loading up on materials for a blood draw, as Amaro slips out of Olivia’s room.

“She’s okay to see you, if you still want,” Amaro offers, eyes darting to Linda.

“Of course I do,” Rafael says, internally wincing at how solemnly eager he sounds. He steps back to let Linda lead the way in, his lips evening out as he braces himself.

It’s her eyes that get him. They usually remind him of a wildfire — warm and molten, a thousand shades of forest brown swirling inside an impassioned need for justice — but now, as she turns her head and her gaze flicks from her nurse to him, they just look dead. Haunted and lifeless, as if she’d finally seen too much of the world.

He barely registers the bandage on her forehead or the sling holding her casted wrist close. Like always, once he starts looking, he can’t stop, only this time it’s because he can’t — refuses to — believe in what he’s seeing.

As he takes the chair Amaro was sitting in, Linda fires through questions about Olivia’s well being — her wrists are sore, her mouth is still dry, her headache is worse than this morning — as she takes her vitals — everything looks normal, though her heart rate is a little elevated, but nothing to worry about — and draws more blood — it’s been twelve hours since the last one, they want to run some more tests.

When Linda leaves, Rafael feels like he was the one who just got probed a dozen different ways.

“You didn’t have to come,” she says after a couple moments. “I’m sure you have a life.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he shoots back, and instantly feels horrible for his tone, a feeling only assuaged by the tiniest upturn of the corner of her mouth. “It’s not like I was getting much done before Amaro showed up.”

She hums, her eyes fluttering shut for a breath. Her free hand is resting on the blanket, as still as an undisturbed lake. When her eyes open, there’s a resigned greyness in them. “I’ve been told I’m alone here. At this hospital, I mean.”

The words confuse him — wouldn’t she be able to figure out she was given a single room just by looking around? — but then when her meaning hits, it sucker punches him in the gut. She can’t even indirectly reference William Lewis right now. Her uphill battle suddenly seems that much steeper.

_I’ll also remind you that she’s here and not up in Behavioral Health._

“I have no idea,” Rafael replies quietly, trying to be soft and caring and feeling way out of his depth. Her gaze still has him reeled in, and he’s definitely in uncharted territory. “But if that’s what you heard, then it’s probably true.”

She breaks eye contact, looking out the window over his shoulder. It’s a bright, sunny afternoon, with a clear sky betraying the horrors of what happened throughout the week. “Do you know if they’ll assign you to my case?”

Her voice sounds small and faraway. It digs into Rafael’s chest and scoops out a tiny piece of him that he fears will scar in its absence.

Part of him wants to change the subject, get her talking about anything else to keep her mind busy, but he remembers the way he felt the first time his father broke skin and made him bleed — how all he could focus on was playing back that evening to try to figure out if it had really happened, if it was really his blood staining the toilet paper he was pressing against his face — and he guesses that everyone else will want to distract her, too, so he answers with as much as information as he knows, hoping it will help calm her.

“I don’t know. The D.A. may assign someone else because you and I are coworkers, but I have the shortest docket of anyone in my bureau at the moment. We should know come Monday.”

“Monday,” she sighs. “They say I’m going home on Monday.”

“I heard.”

“Does it… Would it matter, at all, if I wanted you assigned to my case?”

The request floors him. He sits in the shock for a moment before filing it away to mull over on the ride back to the city. “Given the circumstances and who you are…put it in writing and we’ll see. I can’t imagine it would hurt you.”

Olivia immediately dives for a folder and pen sitting on her wheeling bed tray, pulling blank notebook paper out of the back and starts scrawling out her wishes. “Here,” she says after a couple silent minutes, scribbling her signature and the date at the bottom. It’s the most alive she’s looked during his entire visit.

He takes it and folds it in thirds without reading it, sliding the paper in one of his suit jacket’s inner pockets. She puts the folder and pen back on the tray, slumping a little as her quick burst of energy evaporated. She yawns.

“It’s not unusual to be tired after a trauma happens,” she says, and he’s not sure if she’s talking to him or herself. It suddenly strikes Rafael that she may know too much for her own good in this. Her head slowly falls to the side, her gaze meeting his again. “Thank you for being here.”

“Always am,” he replies, trying to swallow back tears and his own surprise that he wants to cry in the first place.

* * *

 

> **Day Four (Tuesday, May 28, 2013)**  

**Olivia:** Braved the outside world long enough to get a new phone. Any updates?

 **Rafael:** Shouldn’t you be resting?

 **Olivia:** Humor me.

 **Rafael:** No decision until the end of the week. DA wants to take his time with this one, but it’s looking good if there’s any truth to the rumors flying around right now.

 **Olivia:** Good.

 **Olivia:** What are you doing tomorrow?

 **Rafael:** Meetings in the morning, an arraignment at three. Porque?

 **Olivia:** Meeting my department appointed shrink at 5 and Brian has to work. Any chance you can help?

 **Olivia:** Being alone is hard right now but I need to go.

 **Rafael:** I’ll see what I can do. Have you asked anyone else?

 **Olivia:** Not yet.

 **Rafael:** Okay 

 **Olivia:** What?

 **Rafael:** Nothing. Sorry, have to deal with something. Give me five?

 **Olivia:** Sure.

—

 **Rafael:** All right, I’m here.

 **Rafael:** Going may be difficult, but I should be able to be your escort home. Figure out a backup in case something comes up for me. 

 **Olivia:** I’ll send you the address tomorrow.

* * *

> **Day Five (Wednesday, May 29, 2013)**

Getting out early enough to help Olivia took cashing in a small favor, going in two hours earlier than normal, and citing a family obligation to Carmen on his way out the door. It wasn’t until he was in the elevator of Olivia’s therapist’s building that he realized what he’d said.

_Who the fuck says ‘family obligation’ when they’re taking a coworker friend to their therapy appointment?_

_No, you’re being an idiot. It’s nothing. ‘Family’ always carries more weight than ‘personal’._

_… A therapist would love to get their hands on me, wouldn’t they?_

She’s still in her session when he gets there, and the guy waiting shoots Rafael an odd look when he doesn’t sit down.

He ignores him. For some reason, he’s too keyed up to sit.

Olivia surfaces, a thin, older gentleman with the disposition of blank canvas — her therapist, Rafael guesses — right behind her. Her mouth breaks out into a small smile when she sees Rafael standing there, waiting for her, and he returns it in a gesture of support.

“I take it you’re here for her,” the man says, reaching out to shake Rafael’s hand, and Rafael grasps it firm for a moment, nodding. “I’ll see you next week at five, Olivia.”

“That was draining,” she says in the elevator, the back wall propping her up. She’s barely an inch from him, but she’s quiet enough to make him strain to hear. “This is why I hate therapy.”

“Well, I don’t think anyone actually enjoys it,” he tries to quip, and considers his effort a success when she rolls her eyes at him.

“I know I said I wanted to go back to Brian’s when we left,” she says, “But it turns out that I’m starving.”

“It _is_ six,” he offers her, not checking his phone. “Where do you want to go?”

She falls silent as the elevator reaches the ground floor and lets them out, stopping halfway through the short lobby. Her eyes are fixed on the revolving door of the office building they’re in, watching people trickle in and stream out. “Forlini’s,” she says eventually.

His first thought is that she’s about to run off and drown herself in wine, and when he opens his mouth to point out that a _bar_ may not be the best place for her right now, she cuts him off.

“I’m on enough benzos to subdue a horse. Trust me when I say the last thing I plan on doing right now is drinking.”

“So then why…”

“It’s a familiar place that’s still new to me, if that makes sense. I need that right now.”

It doesn’t make sense, but he keeps his mouth shut and leads the way outside, not wanting to upset what precious emotional stability she seems to be clinging to at the moment.

—

He lets her take the back corner of the back booth, her eyes only dropping to his when they fall in the path of her restaurant-wide sweep. She never stops, not even to look at the menu, and he ends up ordering for her when it comes time, taking a stab at what she might find palatable and hoping he picked right.

“Sorry,” she says when she snaps herself out of it a few minutes later. “I just—”

“You’re fine,” he says, glancing up at her from his Facebook feed, feeling a strange disconnect between the manufactured happiness in his hand and the shell of a woman sitting across from him. When he sees she still really hasn’t stopped taking everyone in, he locks his phone and sets it to the side. He goes to grab her hand across the table but stops halfway, suddenly unsure of her boundaries. “Can I…?”

She glances at his hands, palms up and waiting for her consent, and she nods, closing the distance and sliding her fists under his outstretched fingers. They web across, sliding through cracks and brushing along her wrist. He notices the bruises from her handcuffs are nearly gone.

“Olivia.” His voice catches halfway through her name, his throat thick, and he clears it, looking away for a moment so she doesn’t fully see how much he’s struggling to not yell at everyone to shut up and go away. He steadies himself and meets her gaze again, now primarily focused on him and shifting away for half a heartbeat every other second. “You’re safe here. I promise. I wouldn’t have brought you here if you weren’t.”

“It’s called hypervigilance.”

“I know.”

“I know you know. Sorry.”

“Apologize one more time and you’re buying your own dinner.”

She looks genuinely offended at that, and he draws back his hands, unable to gauge if her expression is in jest or not. “I can pay for my own food.”

“I know you can.”

“Sorry, I—”

“There you go again.”

She groans, letting her head drop to the arm resting on the table. “This is exhausting.”

“What is?”

“Everything. Existing.”

Despite reassuring her that he knew what red flags to look for, Linda had still insisted on telling him and Amaro to keep an ear out for comments like that. It rattles him a little that he didn’t have to wait very long.

Her head shoots up at his silence, fear and fatigue filling her face. “I didn’t mean…like that, I’m not—I’m fine. Really.”

This new Olivia is throwing him for a loop every chance she gets.

“I believe you.”

“You do?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know.” She pulls her glass of water close, sips half-heartedly at it as she continues scanning the restaurant. It’s like it gives her something to do. “So I gave my statement after I got out of the hospital on Monday.”

“Who’s working your case?”

“Bateman.”

“Don’t know them.”

“She’s from the two-one; did a stint in Queens SVU. Seems competent enough. They needed someone with jurisdiction who isn’t connected to any of us.”

“‘Competent enough’?”

Olivia shrugs. “It’s open and shut. We know all the—” She pauses, grappling for the appropriate words. “There’s no question over identity or the veracity of anyone’s statements. It’s mostly just organizing the timeline and sorting through physical evidence. I’m not worried about how well she can match words to facts.”

“You’re more concerned about the trial.”

“Absolutely.” His eyes find hers, wide and assessing. He wonders if she’s aware of how on edge she looks. “That’s why I want you.”

“And if I do get assigned your case, you have my word, Olivia Benson, that I will do everything I am able to see he gets put away for as long as possible.”

“I know.” Her hand flexes into a fist again, as if squeezing air, and then she forces her hand to relax, spreading her fingers wide. “I trust you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't abandoned this at all (graduating college + moving back home + starting two new jobs + laptop dying equals no writing time for me) so here's something I've been kicking around for a while. I have follow-ups planned for this particular piece, but they may not come in succession since I have a couple other pieces for this that I'm working on, along with two other fics for SVU alone. Next piece will be up whenever it gets finished, but I promise it won't be another seven months!


End file.
